That Other Presidential Campaign

By

Matthew Kaminski

Updated Feb. 27, 2008 12:01 a.m. ET

St. Petersburg, Russia

Ahead of another foreordained election this Sunday, Vladimir Putin exudes confidence about his political future. Yet his actions betray an insecurity that must come naturally to a man with KGB-honed analytical skills.

By the looks of this dull presidential campaign, "Putinism" is settling in for a Thousand Years. Dmitry Medvedev, the 42-year-old aide tapped by President Putin, is so sure of victory that he rarely bothers to hit the hustings. In any case, most Russians believe that Mr. Putin will stay top dog. The popular incumbent, constitutionally barred from a third consecutive term, plans to take the job of prime minister.

ENLARGE

President Putin earlier this month declared his future seat "the highest executive power in the country," which it certainly wasn't in his eight years at the Kremlin. According to recent polls, about 70% of Russians plan to endorse this job switch by checking off Medvedev on their ballot.

A look around the birthplace of the current and future president helps explain why. After the depression and upheavals of the previous decade, St. Petersburg enjoys growth of 8% (slightly above the national average), full employment and investor and Kremlin favor. Gray vestiges of Soviet times are washed clean by trillions in oil and gas rubles. Across the country, Putinism has been good for pocketbooks, whether of the country's 101 billionaires, a total now second only to America's, or a growing middle class.

But Mr. Putin doesn't appear to suffer from illusions about the breadth of his support, or the economy's ability to surf record commodity prices forever. As he must know, only a sheer incompetent could've blown the windfall from an eight-fold jump since 2000 in the price for the country's biggest export, oil. If anything, Mr. Putin slowed recovery by freezing economic reforms since his re-election in 2004 and Kremlinizing the energy industry, starting with the appropriation of the premier private oil company, Yukos.

With executive competence and the economy a fragile pillar of Putinism, the far more reliable one is coercion and centralized state control. The single constant of the Putin era is the Kremlin's concerted efforts to hobble free media, business, opposition parties, foreign and Russian NGOs, the Duma and local governments.

No challenge to Putinism is too small. The Yabloko party, a prominent minority voice in the St. Petersburg regional council, got yanked off the ballot before last spring's municipal elections, formally for falsifying signatures needed to get on. It was a dry run. The Kremlin last month used the same tactic to keep former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, barely registering a pulse in polls, from running for president.

Many Russians are content or cowed enough not to complain. Conversations about politics, so free flowing in the 1980s and '90s, are hard to find or carried on in hushed tones.

"For regular people, the guiding philosophy is cynicism," says Andrei Dmitriev, an opposition activist in St. Petersburg. "They know that nothing depends on them," and as long as the state doesn't rob or beat them, won't make a fuss.

Along with political apathy and civic disengagement, Mr. Putin has brought back an old tradition, fear. As in the old days, politics is scary and dangerous. Not many are willing to take the risk when dabbling brings trouble -- say, exile in Siberia (consider the plight of former Yukos boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky), assassination (the crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya's in 2006 just one among many) or, probably least bad, a few knocks from enthusiastic riot police cracking heads at small opposition protests.

Why would President Putin, riding so high in polls, have such a thin skin? Let's try to get inside his.

At the KGB in the 1980s, and as an aide to former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak in the early 1990s, Mr. Putin stood in the shadows, "a good bureaucrat with a clean desk" (according to Sobchak's former speechwriter Andrei Chernov) and "modest, hard-working" (according to former city deputy Alexander Sazanov). He was a secret agent and bag man for big men before Boris Yeltsin plucked him from relative obscurity to run the country in 2000.

Mr. Putin has never picked up the politician's knack for winning hearts or votes. He looks ill at ease in front of large crowds; on television, he's most likely to be seen sitting at his desk, lecturing underlings. He elicits respect, not adulation. By temperament and experience, Mr. Putin must fear elections, unless he can control the outcome.

In whittling away at democratic freedoms, however, Mr. Putin weakens his regime's legitimacy. His survival allows no room for error; and he depends on a small and closely-linked circle whose connections to him date back to St. Petersburg. According to an old friend from the KGB here, Mr. Putin treasures and rewards loyalty, but keeps close counsel. "What Putin will do only Putin and his dog Koni know," the friend jokes.

For the presidency, there were stronger candidates for Mr. Putin to pick. But Mr. Medvedev's lack of a background in the security services or a base of support in the apparat was a plus. And with him, Mr. Putin ensures that he'll stay indispensable.

ENLARGE

Only he will be able to mediate conflicts and dole out patronage among his boyars. Only he can speak frankly to the generals. At all levels of the Russian state powerful people owe him their jobs, particularly since he cancelled direct elections for many posts in 2004. Mr. Putin planned his transition well. Unless, of course, Mr. Medvedev learned at his mentor's side and one day manages to push him aside.

Sold as the guarantor of economic and political order, Putinism is at heart unstable. The jockeying for the presidency was hidden but furious, and the power struggle will continue into the new era. And Mr. Putin faces contradictions other Russian leaders, from Alexander II to Mikhail Gorbachev, weren't able to reconcile.

Here's a self-styled modernizing czar who claims to want to open up and enrich Russia, while holding the country by the throat. He stirs up anti-Western chauvinism but demands respect from the West. He claims a broad popular mandate but keeps all the power to himself. The steady destruction of institutions that underpin mature states (a robust legislature, independent courts, strong parties) leaves Russia's future impossible to predict.

But sooner or later, this increasingly prosperous, dynamic and complex society, stretching across 11 time zones, may tire of rule by a feuding clique from St. Petersburg, and do something about it. Perhaps acutely aware of his vulnerabilities, Mr. Putin spent the past eight years building up the firewalls of repression against this very possibility.

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